Sustainable Love: Eco-Friendly Ways to Express Your Feelings this Cuffing Season

October is well upon us, which means Cuffing Season has started, which means many of you people that Beyonce would refer to as #SingleLadies have begun searching for your short-term romantic partner to snuggle through the cold, dark, winter months. You’re looking for the person you’ll share soup with on snowy nights – the situationship you’ll take as your plus one to company holiday parties and themed friend dinner parties.

While we’re all for spiking serotonin levels and we love your love, we don't love the evidence of it sometimes left on Mother Nature. In our quest to show someone we love ‘em, we sometimes forget that our actions can have unintended consequences on the environment – especially during delicate shoulder seasons filled with leaf [pee]ping road trips and the final warm weather romantic strolls.

Want to express your feelings without leaving Mother Earth feeling blue? Let's ditch those old-school moves and get creative with eco-friendly ways to say "I love you!" This guide (and this reel!) will help you navigate the do’s and don’ts of sustainable expressions of love in the great outdoors this fwinter (fall into winter): 

No-No’s: Harmful Practices to Avoid

1. Tree Carving: A Cut Too Deep

It might seem romantic to carve your initials into a tree, creating a lasting symbol of your love for generations to come. While we love your optimism, babe, this move is cringe on multiple levels: the first being the fact that statistically speaking, your cuffing season love is probably not The One (Valentine’s Day is just four months away, and then it’s uncuffing time), and the second being the serious harm this practice causes:

• It damages the tree's protective bark, making it vulnerable to diseases, bacteria, fungus, and pests.
• It can lead to tree death in severe cases, and we already have enough of that with climate change and beetle kill. 
• It can impede a tree’s ability to transport nutrients through its stem.
• It ruins the natural beauty of the landscape for others. Imagine sunset strolling along with your lover, taking in all the fall colors after a long work day, only to see that “Dave and Nancy were here.” Less special, especially if you know for a fact that Dave and Nancy are very much divorced now, and that what you thought was your special spot is actually the scene of a crime: tree vandalism. Don’t be like Dave and Nancy. 

2. Picking Wildflowers: Not-So-Rosy Consequences

If you’re already a Gnara fan, you know we feel strongly about this one – we dove into Miley Cyrus’s impressive knowledge of LNT (Leave No Trace) in this social post, as well as in this blog about Colorado wildflowers this summer. While a bouquet of wildflowers might seem like a sweet and thrifty gesture in this economy, it can have a ton of unintentional negative impacts:

• It disrupts local ecosystems, particularly as it increases erosion in steep and fragile alpine environments. 
• It reduces food sources for already-endangered pollinators.
• It can contribute to the decline of rare and endangered plant species by interrupting their reproductive cycle. 
• It diminishes the beauty of natural areas for other visitors. Gnara is headquartered in the Gunnison Crested Butte Valley – a spot known as “The Wildflower Capital of Colorado” (for real, there’s a whole 10-day festival that people fly in from all over the world for). Imagine if every one of the hundreds of thousands of people who came here picked a flower as a souvenir – there’d be nothing left to see and an entire mountain town economy reliant on tourism would collapse. Don’t be that person. Keep wildflowers WILD, baby!
  
  

Planet-Approved Alternatives: Show Your Love, Spare Nature

1. Capture the Moment and Bring Out Your Inner Artist

• Paint a literal Picture: Bring along a small watercolor set or sketchbook and create a lasting image of your favorite view together. You can host your own mobile sip ‘n’ paint outside. Bob Ross (and your mom!) would be proud. If you’re in a long distance situationship or missing your friends from home, you can take this a step further and use it as the basis of some postcard pen pal correspondence! Our team has also been known to use these tiny paintings as fridge art. While your fridge might be empty, your heart can remain full. <3
• Snap a Photo: It will last longer! Snag some pics of beautiful scenes or each other enjoying nature. This preserves the memory without altering the environment, and is a great excuse to brush up on your iPhone photography skills, or some real ones offered by local photographers. Whether you use them for your next #WomanCrushWednesday post or step it up with a framed black and white gift for the next holiday, this alternative is guaranteed to put a smile on multiple faces. :) 

2. Share an Experience: Date Ideas that are a step up from just dinner or drinks

• Stargazing Picnic: Pack a little picnic of your favorite treats and warm drinks, invest in that double, two-person sleeping bag (thank us later) and find a dark spot to watch the stars together. Even the back of your Tacoma parked in the driveway will do. Netflix and Chill just got a serious upgrade.
• Summit Dance Party: Grab your portable speaker, hike to your favorite peak or yog to the most convenient overlook, and have an impromptu dance celebration when you get there! Shaking your booty is proven to increase serotonin levels, and if you happen to be wearing our Go There Pants or Go There Shorts with pockets that are 48% deeper and 16% wider than the average pockets found in women’s apparel, you can feel confident knowing that your butt will also look amazing during this activity – twerking or not.  
• Birdwatching Date: Snag a birding book from your local Free Little Library (or build one together if your neighborhood doesn’t have one yet!), sit on your porch or head to a local park, and see how many species you can spot! A common misconception is that you must be at least 79 years old to enjoy this activity. We can confirm that this is extremely satisfying in your 20s – imagine how much you will learn between now and retirement! Couples who bird together, stay together. 

3. Give Back to Nature (and Gift Sustainably!)

• Plant a Tree (or buy from brands who do this holiday season!): Depending on where you live, you might be able to find a local tree-planting event together this Cuffing Season, but if not, you can surprise your partner with a gift from a company who will plant a tree in exchange. 
• Beach, Street, or Trail Cleanup: Show your love for each other and the environment by Googling a local event near you! It doesn’t have to be Earth Day to pick up trash, and we promise that this activity will weirdly boost your perception of yourself and your S.O. as a “good person."

4. Learn Together

• Nature Journaling: If you’ve ever done a thru-hike or stayed in an Air BnB, you know how nice it can be to look through the guest log or guest book. Start a shared nature journal where you both record observations, thoughts, or memories about your outdoor experiences. It can be awesome to relive an experience through someone else’s point of view, or to get to share in an experience, even if it was solo. 
• Attend a Workshop: Sign up for a class on mushrooming, wildlife tracking, foraging, fly fishing, wild game cooking, or anything else you’re curious about!